Zipping through the Mercado Central

Saturday morning, we ventured into San José's most popular maze, also known as the Mercado Central.

Stepping into one of the four corner entrances of this market, you are immediately bombarded by the quantity of goods for sale. Numerous narrow nooks of store-line pathways comprise this central shopping spot. The intersection of the pathways are plentiful, each another decision-point in this choose-your-own-adventure novel of a novel experience. 

Strolling swimmingly down one aisle, you are immersed under the odor ocean of fresh fish filling your nostrils: look to each side around you, and the fish will stare blankly back from their bed of ice. March over to another alley and you'll find enticing tropical fruits galore! Running low on energy? Rally yourself to a restaurant. Pursuing some new purses? Clothing and more touristy shops got you covered. Suddenly find yourself wishing you had a pet bird? No problema! Pets stores got your back.

Frutas!

One group from our class had the assignment of finding and buying tropical fruits, which we later got to sample!

In addition to inquisitively wandering around, we had assignments in the Mercado as well. My group was supposed to find what traditional plant remedies were being sold to treat Diabetes. Plenty of medicinal plant stores flourished throughout the market, and all of them had treatments for Diabetes. Some recommended only one herb, while others advised an arranged assortment, with many of the suggestions overlapping from vendor to vendor. With all of the herbs, it's instructed that you make a tea and drink it with some sort of frequency (differs depending on whom you ask). One of the vendors wore a long white shirt with the name "Dr. House" sharpied on the front...traditional medicine meets pop culture?

Medicinal plants shop with some herbs hanging from the ceiling

The wide array of uses and types of plants rooted in traditional medicine blew me away!

After hunting down methods to lower blood sugar for an hour, it seemed only fitting to find a way to increase my own! So, to an ice cream store I went. This little 100+ year old ice cream shop inside the Mercado Central makes only one flavor, which might as well be named the Most-Delicious-Thought-Provokingly-Intriguing-Flavor-Ever flavor. Except it would probably be in Spanish. And it would need to be more catchy. Blissful Twist? Heaven Crunch? Cloud of Delight? Anyway, I have no idea what its actual name is. You can make your own name for it...it'll be part of your Choose-Your-Own-Adventure path! Glad we settled that. Anyway, eating the ice cream itself is analogous to throwing yourself down a glorious black hole of flavors, in that the world outside of your mouth suspends in both time and space as you bask in the glory of a combo of cinnamon, nutmeg, perhaps some pumpkin thrown in there. Seriously, if I wasn't feeling so anti-corporation, I'd suggest someone call of Mr. Willy Wonka himself to check this out (but not the Johnny Depp version, because that was just terrifying). 

Enough said.

On Sunday, we did that quintessential Costa Rican touristy thang...ziplining through the tree canopies! About a half-hour's ride from San José, I strapped on a harness, helmet and gloves and zipped past some trees! It was pretty cool. Here's a video (in which you get an excellent view of my precautionary raincoat sleeve, as well as some trees)! You might want to watch it in full screen mode if you don't have your field magnifying glass on you.